The use of J-hook attachments for securing seat covers to an underlying seat structure is well known. In a typical seating system, for example, an upholstery material is provided with a J-hook attachment along its edge. The upholstery material ordinarily will be secured to the J-hook attachment by stitching the J-hook attachment to the upholstery material along the length of the edge. The J-hook is then coupled with the upholstery material so that the material can be secured in place, such as to a seat frame, by way of the J-hook. There is a desire to improve the efficiency of this process while maintaining the integrity achievable using a stitching process.
It is believed that at least one attempt has been made to secure a polypropylene fabric to an extruded profile of polypropylene by providing an extrude circular profile having a wedge omitted. The walls defining the wedge are believed to be coated with a bonding material and pressure is applied to marry the profile at the walls to the fabric. The resulting product has the appearance of a fabric with an extruded plastic bead along its edge.
Direct extrusion of a profile along an edge of an upholstery material is generally difficult, particularly with any substantial profile section thicknesses. That is, upon cooling, the extruded profile tends to exhibit thermal distortion, resulting in an uncontrolled irregular, wavy surface.
As can be seen, there is thus a need for an improved approach for marrying substrates to an extruded profile.